Sex Ed: The Forgotten Chapter

Family lawyer David Pisarra argues that teaching young men how to use a condom isn’t enough—they need to know what can happen if they don’t.

“I know all about using condoms,” says Joey from Jersey. He’s eighteen, and that’s what he thinks he needs to know about sex. I can’t fault him—it’s no worse than most of my clients (I’m a divorce and child custody lawyer). The problem is that at eighteen, he’s a man, and he needs to know a lot more about what having a child means. Both for his future, and for the future of any child he fathers.

We were in the jacuzzi at my beachfront gym, surrounded by nubile girls, and Joey was on high alert for any female that he could conquer. He was looking past me as we exchanged the meaningless banter that people who don’t know each other exchange. He had just graduated high school and was taking a year off to travel before college.

Seeing him all amped up about the girls got me thinking about what they teach in high school about sex and family planning, and the carnage I see on a regular basis in my practice. I asked him if anyone had ever explained to him what really happens when two people have a child. Not the fairytale ending of living happily ever after, but the more likely scenario of being a co-parent with someone that you barely know and don’t have much in common with.

“No, not really. I have an idea because my parents were divorced.” And that’s when it hit me: we need to tell young men—boys really—what co-parenting is really like. Eighteen years of child support that can cripple your future if you fall behind; and not being allowed to have full access to your kid takes an emotional toll.

♦♦♦

If we want to make better men, we need to arm them with the reality of the consequences of their actions. I see men every week who have no idea what’s expected of them as fathers, financially or emotionally.

Most of my clients think they’re going to get fifty percent custody and have a major role in raising their children. Unfortunately, that’s a pipe dream. Legally, they’re going to have to pay about twenty-five percent of their income per child, and if they get the standard “dad package,” they’ll see their kids every other weekend, and have a Wednesday dinner. It doesn’t really matter how much they want it to be different; that’s what courts order.

If we told young men that they’ll be giving about twenty-five percent of their gross paycheck for child support, they might think twice about prevention. If we told them that with a minimum wage job of $10 an hour, they will spend $430 a month in child support, it might wake them up. If we explained that eighteen years of child support would cost them $92,000—about the equivalent of the young man’s college education—they might begin to understand that having a child when you’re unprepared can mean the difference between a great future and a dead-end future.

When a baby is born, if the couple doesn’t live together, dad can expect to see his child between four and eight hours a week, or four percent of the time, if the court makes orders.

How much parenting can you do with four hours a week?

Over the course of the next few years, it will increase to about twenty percent of the week.

The problem is that so many young men are growing up with absent fathers—which creates a desire in them to be a father themselves; but the reality is that the legal system will likely cause them to be just another absent father.

About David Pisarra

David Pisarra is a motivational speaker specializing in Men’s Empowerment. He is a recovering Carbo-Holic. As a father’s rights lawyer he has focused on representing men in family court. He is the author of multiple books and host of the Men’s Family Law podcast on iTunes.
InstaGram:@davidpisarra
Twitter: @davidpisarra
Please visit www.DavidPisarra.com

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Parents should start talking to their kids about sex at a very young age. You shouldn’t just have one sex talk. You should have an ongoing discussion — and, ideally, dialogue. Sex is an explosive issue for young people, and they may not understand all the consequences.

Do you really think that if you had tried to turn the conversation to the consequences of sexuality with Joey from Jersey that he would have listened? Your idea is admirable and something I will most likely try to implement in the education of my own pre-teen son but seriously the thought I had at the top of my mind as I read your words is teenagers and young adults think that consequences are things that happen to other people. I believe that the real issue here is that parenting as a whole is totally devalued in our culture. Most… Read more »

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7 years ago

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wellokaythen

I totally agree, the more information about the effects of being a parent, the better. Two reactions, though: 1) It couldn’t hurt to tell young men about the consequences of their actions, but I wonder how much of it would sink in with the average high school student. Teenagers often have very little idea about real-life consequences, and many of them have never had a paycheck to split with anyone anyway. I agree with the idea, just skeptical how much it would make a difference. 2) Sure there are condoms for intercourse and everything, but kids today are already way… Read more »

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7 years ago

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Derek

A focus on pregnancy and STD’s is a conversation that is easy and comfortable for the man, at the cost of the boy. Hand the boy a pamphlet to read, then at least the facts are straight. Men have so much more to offer boys than another lecture about the consequences of having sex. The forgotten chapter of sex education is the one where a boy has the freedom to explore for himself what his sexuality is, free of someone else’s shame and judgement. Men, let’s stretch and be uncomfortable. Have a dialog with the boy about what it means… Read more »

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8 years ago

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Leif

Thank you for speaking to the question of how to empower young men to make mature decisions about the nature of their relationships with women. This is an increasingly pressing question. What, though, are the implications of encouraging young men by threatening financial obligations? This adds weight to the idea that money is a legitimate motivator—a drive fueled by the same type of feelings that drive someone to augment and fulfill sexual desires. How might be motivate young men by appealing to their drive to be a good father? How can the myth that not all people have that higher… Read more »